Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the dubbed version of the film My cousin Vinny (1992, Jonathan Lynn, USA), with the aim of determining how American legal terms are translated into Italian. The film was chosen because of the presence of numerous courtroom scenes that offer the opportunity to analyse how the legal language used in a courtroom of the United States can be translated. In fact, this paper focuses on how translators faced the difficulties raised by the presence of elements of two different legal systems: the legal system of the United States has unique characteristics that had to be somehow conveyed in the Italian version of the film.
Therefore, the first chapter attempts to give some basic information about the differences between the Italian and the US legal systems, in order to understand how the lack of correspondence between the two systems complicates even further the dubbing process. It briefly describes the main features of common law and civil law, and then focuses on the characteristics, of the Italian and the US judicial systems, relevant to this analysis.
The analysis of legal language is presented in the second chapter. The first part of this chapter concerns the translation of specific legal terms and how the differences between the Italian and the US judicial systems influenced the translation. In the second part, the focus shift on the translation of fixed legal formulas typical of American courtrooms.

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the dubbed version of the film My cousin Vinny (1992, Jonathan Lynn, USA), with the aim of determining how American legal terms are translated into Italian. The film was chosen because of the presence of numerous courtroom scenes that offer the opportunity to analyse how the legal language used in a courtroom of the United States can be translated. In fact, this paper focuses on how translators faced the difficulties raised by the presence of elements of two different legal systems: the legal system of the United States has unique characteristics that had to be somehow conveyed in the Italian version of the film.
Therefore, the first chapter attempts to give some basic information about the differences between the Italian and the US legal systems, in order to understand how the lack of correspondence between the two systems complicates even further the dubbing process. It briefly describes the main features of common law and civil law, and then focuses on the characteristics, of the Italian and the US judicial systems, relevant to this analysis.
The analysis of legal language is presented in the second chapter. The first part of this chapter concerns the translation of specific legal terms and how the differences between the Italian and the US judicial systems influenced the translation. In the second part, the focus shift on the translation of fixed legal formulas typical of American courtrooms.